While many young engineers today will not remember the “brownie”, an early ubiquitous box for taking images on film made by Eastman Kodak and turned into the company for development of the film, there are today disposable cameras available to a customer at a “drug store” which allow the customer to take images on a film inside the cameras. These customers then return the camera to the drugstore for development of the film inside the camera. The purchase of the disposable camera with included film costs in the neighborhood of US$10.00 for say 24 or 36 exposures. Then development and printing onto 3×5 inch photo prints costs a like amount, and as a result today the total cost per print ranges between about 50 cents to 85 cents.
However, in this “modern” era, the digital generation is able to have images printed for something like 36 cents a piece by a photo developer at the mall, by using a digital image camera. The digital photographer can either take in a diskette or a Smart media or Flash card to the store or take in the camera itself if it stores the images on an internal chip to photo print/development houses that have the equipment to print the image.
Today there are many different varieties of processing digital images with a digital camera which has a CCD photo sensor, a controller and some sort of memory for storing the images captured by the digital camera's photo sensor and stored on the internal memory, such as the micro diskette, the Smart media or Flash card. Digital cameras using removable memory such as a micro diskette, 64 megabyte storage device elements such as the Smart media or the Flash card, or “Zip” drives, as a storage device can capture more images than can a more moderately priced digital camera which stores images on an internal chip are commonly used. These digital cameras usually have a port for uploading the images taken and locally stored to a personal computer via the USB port on the PC or laptop computer. Since Microsoft® unveiled its Windows® 95 photo viewing and printing of images uploaded (sometimes called “download”, “offload” or otherwise “transferred”) to the personal computer viewing and printing system over the USB cable has been available to the many users of Microsoft's imaging software which is included with the operating system installed on most personal computers and laptops. Typically the images are 840×680 pixels in size.
Hewlett Packard® provides equipment for photo printing and a Smart media digital camera (the HP615) which may be purchased for about $1000 as a package, with each 64 Megabyte Smart or Flash card being purchased separately. Larger images are now readily available in digital cameras using JPEG compression. For instance a 3.1 megapixel image having a resolution similar to the resolution of a 35 mm optical camera can now taken with a digital camera purchased at retail for about $500.00.
State of the art digital cameras which may be used with the development that will be described but which do not afford now our improvements may be purchased from retailers of the Sony® Corporation's (via its Sony Electronics, Inc. as well as Sony Semiconductor and Sony Computing operations) products. There are several Sony Digital Cameras. For instance there is the DSC-F1 Digital Still Camera with an infrared wireless connectivity to a PC. As seen at:http://www.ita.sel.sony.com/products/archive/imaging/dscf1.html)this DSC-F1 Digital Still Camera is a Sony Digital Still Camera which features infrared wireless connectivity to a PC as well as an internal flash memory capable of storing up to 108 pictures at a 640×480—24-bit color (16.7 million colors) resolution. The DSC-F1's built-in 1.8″ LCD screen allows for easy viewing with no need to hold the camera up to your eye with “what you see is exactly what you get” and allowing using the LCD monitor, one to instantly review your pictures in the field and delete any unwanted ones. This DSC-F1 provides a wireless (infrared) connection allowing the user to send images to and from the camera's internal storage (4 MB Internal Flash Memory) and a PC with Windows 95, 98 or 2000 (There are drivers for all Microsoft versions.) You can also print pictures directly to Sony's DPP-M55 Digital Color Photo Printer with wireless infrared support—without the need for a computer. With standard video output, the DSC-F1 can be connected directly to a TV or video monitor, and used as a portable presentation device. The DSC-F1 comes bundled with ArcSoft's PhotoStudio® DSC image manipulation software. The user can artistically modify the pictures taken by distorting, adding effects, tiling, merging, and other techniques. The images taken are provided with a digital date/time stamp. The digital interface for the DSC-F1 is infrared (which connects to Windows 95 PC with IrDA (infra-red digital adapter) support*) and USB Serial (which connects to a Macintosh or a PC via supplied a cable). The video output is provided by an NTSC Standard Phono Jack. The recording modes are single frame (normal) or continuous, timed, multi-screen, or self-timed. Sony Corporation also supplies a variety of parts for optical and wireless sending of digital information for custom manufactured products (as illustrated by those on their web site for current devices, see the printout thereof provided with this application from the web site http://www.sel.sony.com/semi/number.html) and packages these or similar products as a complete system like the Hewlett Packard 615 package with their own Sony package (see http://www.ita.sel.sony.com/products/archive/imaging/dppm55.html). Other Sony Digital Cameras are in the DSC-D700 Series, where particularly the DSC-D770 at the time of this application was a camera which could be used in the environment of the preferred embodiment of the invention. This DSC-D770, as described at the Sony Web site located at http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/consumer/ss5/office/digitalstillcamer as/cybershotrtmdigitalstillcameras/dsc-d770_specs.shtml is a Sony Cybershot (trademark claimed by Sony) professional Digital Still Camera: This is a Sony consumer digital still camera with exceptional image quality and features that can only be found on high-end professional cameras. The DSC-D770 features a high performance Progressive Scan 1.5 Million Square Pixel CCD. This will create still images with high quality resolution (up to 1344×1024), which is excellent quality for printing or sending still images from a user's computer once they are there. 5× Manual Optical Zoom Lens with Manual Focus: Equivalent to a f28 mm to 140 mm zoom lens in a 35 mm camera, this manual zoom lens gives a user flexibility in composing pictures. The manual focus ring allows for a more accurate, so called, professional feel. High Quality Progressive Scan CCD with 1.5 Million Square Pixels Provides high quality still images by reading all of the pixels on the imager (CCD) with a single pass, delivering clean edges and an overall sharper picture quality. 2.5″ Advanced Color LCD with Brightness Control (180K Pixels): Use the LCD for playback, or for the viewfinder while taking shots. Large, full color LCD Display viewfinder enables a preview or review of shots right on the camera back with detail and clarity. Removable ATA Type II PC Memory Card or Memory Stick media is the supplied storage medial. A popular storage media, ATA Type II PC memory cards allows storage digital images on these cards. The DSC-D770 will also allow the capture of images on a supplied Sony 8MB Memory Stick Digital Storage Media and ATA Type II PC Card Adapter. The Sony MSAC-PC2 Memory Stick Card Adapter is than twice as fast as the previous MSAC-PC1, so the MSAC-PC2 decreases the read/write time significantly. JPEG or TIFF File Formats: A user may select between JPEG compression, or for best quality, choose the non-compressed TIFF mode to capture images. This Sony Digital Camera provides a variety of automatic and manual modes for capture of images with or without flash and strobe lights, and other features to provide control over an exposure to enhance performance results. This Sony Digital Camera is supplied with a PC Card Reader which allows for easy parallel port connection to a IBM PC compatible computer. The Camera is also supplied with an 8 MB Memory Stick Digital Data Storage (MSA-8A), a Memory Stick PC Card Adapter (MSAC-PC2), a Wireless Remote Controller (RM-S7D) enabling infrared remote control, a Video Cable and other accessories including the MSA-8A/16A/32A/64A Memory Stick Media, MSAC-FD2M Memory Stick Floppy Disk Adapter, a MSAC-PC2 Type II PC Card Reader, and a MSAC-US1 Memory Stick USB Adapter are supplied by Sony for use with the Digital Camera.
The Sony DPP-M55 Digital Color Photo Printer provides an infrared connection to a Sony Digital Still Camera and makes the Digital Color Photo Printer a simple solution for printing digital photos. This printer uses dye sublimation printing technology and dye sublimation printing is achieved when standard process dyes are heated to the degree of vaporization in a transfer roll and diffused onto paper to produce continuous—tone images. Unlike color ink jet printing technologies where a liquid is transferred straight to paper, the dye sublimation process converts liquid to gas producing rich, continuous—tone colors. The infrared wireless connection on the DPP-M55 lets you print pictures directly from Sony's DSC-F1 Digital Still Camera (without any computer necessary). This wireless connection also doubles as an infrared adapter to connect Sony's DSC-F1 Digital Still Camera to the computer.
Furthermore, as IBM Japan's Research Published in January 2001, at a web site an overview of the Bluetooth technology today. As they said, recently, many types of mobile devices with high-level computing capabilities, such as cellular phones, Cps, digital cameras, and high-performance PDAs, have come into widespread use. In 2000, some of these devices became capable of short range wireless communication empowered by the Bluetooth TM technology. IBM Japan's research area is the computing environments in which such mobile devices are organically connected each other. IBM Japan's web page introduced the Bluetooth technology and ad-hoc networking as an example of their projects.
As they said with respect to the Bluetooth technology, some time ago, each of peripheral devices, such as mice, keyboards, and printers, used to require a dedicated cable to be connected to a PC. Now, thanks to the Universal Serial Bus (USB), they only need a standard cable. For instance, with IBM's Net Vista X40 line, a keyboard and a mouse use radio frequency signals to communicate with the CPU And the keyboard and mouse can be purchased separately and added to most USB equipped machines. In near future, the Bluetooth technology will throw all the cables out of our computing environments. What is Bluetooth? It is a short range wireless communication technology developed by leading computer and communication companies in the world. IBM is one of the five founding companies. The name Bluetooth comes from the king of Denmark, who controlled Denmark and Norway in the 10th century. We expect that the Bluetooth technology will unite the worlds of cellular phones and data communications as the king did in Scandinavia.
The Bluetooth technology connects nearby devices at a data rate of 1 Mbps. It automatically searches for devices within its radio range (10 m) and connects them. The Bluetooth technology allows one to get rid of the troublesome operations needed to find a connector at the back of the PC to plug a cable in it. Over two thousand companies have adopted the Bluetooth technology for such ease of use.
If one has been to an exhibition on electronics or computers in the last year, there were some Bluetooth devices on display at the exhibition. Cannon of Japan has displayed digital cameras at such exhibitions, for those that can remember Dick Tracy, IBM demonstrated a watch shaped computer with the Bluetooth technology at San Jose Bluetooth Developers's  Conference in December 2000.
Some companies including IBM were already shipping Bluetooth products by the end of 2000. Many if not all digital devices such as cellular phones, PDAs, and game machines will be ready to communicate each other with the Bluetooth technology sometime in 2001.
Use of Ad-Hoc Networking makes use of the large scale of infrastructures which are behind the network being used now, such as servers, routers, gateways, phone lines. When we want to use a network in a meeting, we have to hold the meeting in a room with those facilities and might even pay for that. As it would be more convenient, we believe it would be desirable for a network to be used if it could autonomously be generated at the time desired for a meeting. Today it has not been possible to autonomously construct a network at any place, any time, and with anybody by means of the Bluetooth technology, or other wireless technology.
The Bluetooth technology can be used to connect devices each other easily. However, just a connection does not mean construction of a network. We need a mechanism that manages the network as the infrastructure of a conventional network does. Furthermore, the Bluetooth wireless communication normally can reach no more than 10 meters, and supports only eight active devices in a cell. It is noted that the current Bluetooth specification supports an option of a 20 dbm version as well which will give a 100 meter range. Nevertheless, the range is a problem, and in order to overcome these limitations, in January 2001 IBM Japan researchers reported that they were going to deploy a multi-hop network, in which information is relayed by intermediate devices from the source to the destination. They hoped to created a mechanism for the devices to construct a network autonomously and to forward packets toward the destinations.
As an aside, but to complete the IBM Japan research story found at http://www.trl.ibm.com/projects/wireless/index_e.htm, the web pointed to efforts underway in Japan to create a new way of communication, completely different from conventional networks, named GinJo (Geographical Interactive Network for Jumping Objects). Unlike usual networks, where packets are addressed to particular devices, the destination of the information in GinJo are specified by attributes of the devices, such as locations, time, and users' preferences. The Japanese reported efforts envisioned implementing GinJo on top of the Bluetooth wireless technology.
But Bluetooth technology, like other current wireless communication protocols, requires support from varying amounts of hardware that is specific to one of a variety of communication protocols. Such hardware has some common base, with protocol specific hardware around it. Due to the limited coverage area that each protocol offers and the varying benefits of each protocol, people are currently either restricted to using protocols that limit their devices functionality, but provide a larger coverage area, or they use a more functional protocol at the sacrifice of mobility. Improvement is needed for these developments.